Clinton heads to Middle East for aid conference

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make her first foray into Middle East diplomacy this week, attending a high-level conference on humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make her first foray into Middle East diplomacy this week, attending a high-level conference on humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

She'll also visit Israeli and Palestinian officials at a time when a chorus of voices on both the right and left say the current peace process needs a dramatic new approach.

President Barack Obama won praise by appointing a Middle East envoy on the second day of his presidency, indicating a commitment to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, is making his second tour of the region in a month and will meet up with Clinton at the aid conference on Monday in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik.

However, neither Mitchell nor Clinton appears to have new ideas for rekindling peace efforts. Clinton's husband, former president Bill Clinton, devoted the final months of his administration to unsuccessfully trying to achieve a peace agreement, even sketching out a series of groundbreaking proposals for bridging the gaps still known as the "Clinton parameters."

But much has changed since 2001, and the Bush administration's last-minute stab at peacemaking, known as the Annapolis process, also collapsed in failure.

Hillary Clinton will visit Jerusalem and Ramallah, on the West Bank, on Tuesday and Wednesday before flying to meetings in Europe. Every word she utters in the region will be closely watched for clues to the administration's approach.

Israelis, for instance, will be listening for how hard she presses for Palestinian governmental reform and an end to corruption, while Palestinians are eager to hear a tougher U.S. stance on Israeli settlement construction in Palestinian territories.

"It would be great to hear an American official say that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law," said Nadia Hijab, senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington. "But I don't think I will ever live to see that day."

In 2001, Mitchell wrote a plan to reduce tensions and make progress that both Israelis and Palestinians embraced as fair, although it was never implemented. In a conference call with Jewish-American leaders last month, Mitchell said that when he reread his report, he was struck by how much had changed during the past eight years. Iran, he said, was not mentioned in the report, but the problem of Iranian influence was brought up by every leader in the region during his initial tour.

Any new peace effort is complicated by other factors, including the prospect of a new right-wing Israeli government that's hostile to the idea of a Palestinian state and the splintering of the Palestinian leadership into a moderate faction that runs the West Bank and radical group that controls Gaza.

In December, Israel waged war against the Hamas militant group that controls the coastal strip that's home to almost half the Palestinian population, and it has kept a tight grip on the crossings into Gaza.

The conundrum facing the administration is how does it get aid flowing to the Gazans or encourage Palestinian unity without bolstering Hamas? And how does it encourage the new Israeli government to open up crossings, ease settlement expansion and begin to consider talks with the Palestinians?

Increasingly, many analysts think the goals are contradictory and virtually impossible to achieve.

The United States, for instance, intends to make a substantial pledge at the conference, U.S. officials say, but whether much of it can be delivered is unclear.

"It will only be spent if we determine that our goals can be furthered rather than undermined or subverted," Clinton said Friday. She said aid dollars will "be spent only in service of the goals that will help people feel more secure in their lives, and therefore more confident that progress toward peace would serve them better than retreating to violence and rejectionism."

While officially the Israeli government refuses to deal with Hamas -- and U.S. policy dictates that there can be no contacts until it renounces violence and recognizes Israel -- Jerusalem is negotiating a cease-fire deal with the militant group via Egypt.

Although Clinton doesn't appear to have new ideas for rekindling peace efforts, every word she says in the region will be closely watched for clues to the new administration's approach.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.